But Will YOU be Mad About It?: Our Mansions of Madness Review

By Elliott Miller
14 years ago
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Game Name: Mansions of Madness

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games

Designer: Corey Konieczka

Artists: Christopher Burdett, Anders Finér, and Henning Ludvigsen

Year: 2011

Players: Two to five players

Ages: 13+

Playing Time: Two hours

Retail Price: $79.95

Am I biased? I am a huge HP Lovecraft fan, and a new Mythos based board game from FFG really got my heart racing. Arkham Horror is one of my favorite games, only the length of the game prevents me from getting it to the table more often.

Mansions of Madness attempts to take a step further in the realm of board games. It tries to tell a story, even go so far as to add a cinematic feel to the game. There are characters, they have back stories, there is an introduction to each scenario, there are clues that can be found that further the story. Every few turns, an event occurs letting everyone know that this game is limited, you’d better get yourself moving or it will go on without you. Every attack you make or receive is unique and has descriptive text “You blow the top of its head off” or “You slip and fall, missing completely” among many others.

The board is modular, and is built differently for each scenario. There are different sets of clues, cards, monsters, everything for each scenario. You may find a puzzle that you need to solve, like picking a lock or rewiring an outlet to get the lights back on.

There are 8 different investigators to choose from, and one interesting point of note is that these are the same characters we’ve come to know from Arkham Horror. They have character cards and detailed plastic miniatures (unpainted) to go with them. Another note, since FFG now offers a complete line of painted Arkham Horror figures, you can buy all of the ones you need if you prefer them painted (or paint them yourself and use them with your Arkham Horror game as an added bonus). There are several character trait cards to choose from, letting you fine tune your person and possibly giving you different starting equipment. Do you want to take your dog Duke with you? Or keep your guitar handy Ashcan Pete?

There are also 24 different monster figures (also unpainted), each with a base that allows you to insert there stat tokens in them. You can still see their damage and other stats, so in effect you can have different versions of the same monster figure.

Meanwhile, there are scary things afoot. Monsters can appear, horrible creatures that will slowly drive you insane. You need to keep it together despite your broken arm and your claustrophobia. You didn’t have those problems when you came in here. There is a keeper, a controller of the evil that is trying to stop your band of investigators.

The keeper is not a GM, as in a roleplaying game. The keeper is another player, actively working against your team to stop you.

The object of the game is different, depending upon the scenario that you are playing. There are 5 scenarios, and each one has 3 possible objectives giving you 15 different possible adventures you can challenge. Most of the game time is spent tracking down the clues to discover what your objective is. Then it becomes a race against the clock to see if you can finish it and win before the keeper can stop you.

The rules are actually not bad. There are separate books for the keeper and the players, which enables you to share the setup time. This is good as setup time is extensive. Just sorting out the cards you will need can take 20 minutes depending upon how organized you can be. In reality I have found it better to have the game setup before the players arrive, if you are the keeper that is. There is some fuzziness and jumble to the rules in places, so it helps to get the FAQ from FFG’s website, and you can expect to flip back and forth in the rules for your first few games.

There is a lot to describe for this game, and I will not rehash all of the rules here. Instead, let’s go through a typical turn to give you a feel for it.

Player’s turn: Ashcan Pete says he wants to go first, since he has the shotgun. He fires at the maniac in front of him and manages to deal 4 points of damage, the maniac is injured but not dead. Pete decides to stay put and hope he can avoid getting killed.

Sister Mary manages to finish the wiring puzzle and the lights come on in the bedroom, she searches and finds a torn journal entry. They read the clue and it indicates that there is something sinister happening in the basement. She moves back into the hallway.

Joe Diamond moves into the operating room where Ashcan Pete is fighting off the maniac. Unfortunately for him, the sight drives him a little mad. The keeper lets him know that he has developed a fear of enclosed places. Joe better end his turns in big rooms or he will have a problem. Joe laughs, a little shakily, and fires. Sadly for him, he misses.

The keeper now gathers his new threat tokens and plays a card. A cultist appears next to Sister Mary, who is all alone. She is startled but manages to hold it together and passes her horror check. The cultist manages to get a lock of Sister Mary’s hair and moves out of the room to some nefarious purpose. The keeper plays another card and draws new mythos and trauma cards with an evil smile on his face. He has the maniac attack poor Pete, but Pete is quicker. The maniac falls and is stunned. He will be easy picking for the players next turn. But where is that cultist going?

Meanwhile, the keeper adds a time token to the event card. Next turn, he will turn over another event. Little do the players realize, they now only have 3 turns to win the game, and they don’t even know what they need to do to get out alive yet. If only they had thought to go into the basement a few turns ago, or helped Sister Mary solve that puzzle, they might have a better chance. Joe Diamond is about to die on his next turn, and doesn’t realize that either. Right now, things are looking up for the bad guys. The keeper looks up, smiles and says, “Ok, your turn”

I think this game is excellent. I own the game so I am usually the keeper, and this is probably the situation for most owners. The keeper does their best to stop the players from succeeding, and had many options available to them, within limits. Each scenario tells the keeper which keeper action cards are available to them to use against the players, so you won’t be summoning a Shuggoth every game. There are mythos cards and trauma cards that the keeper can get which you can use to whittle away the players sanity, health, give them phobias, even kill a character.

It is a lot of fun playing the keeper, but the keeper needs to be fair as well. The keeper can make or break the gaming experience for the players, similar to a GM, so you need to keep that in mind while you play. For example, if you concentrate on attacking one particular player it would ruin the experience for them. You need to balance your attacks and share the misery. At least, if you want to keep them coming back to play again that is.

The game can also be a lot of fun for the players. The keeper has rules, so they can be defeated. I have both won and lost games as the keeper, and it is actually cool sometimes to see the players jubilation at the end when they overcome the evil at the last minute and win the game. The characters have special cards and traits available only to them, so it helps the players tune the experience to suit their own tastes. Additionally, in most cases if a character is killed, the player simply selects a new one and comes back in the mansion. Unless there are none left, then they are out of luck.

One note about combat. There are combat card decks that you use to resolve attacks. The cards have specific results for the type of weapon, and whether it is the monsters or players atacking. The nice thing about this system is that each attack has flavor text. So, you attack a maniac with your bare hands, the keeper draws cards from the deck until he finds one that says “No Weapon” at the top, reads “You leap and swing a kick at the monster, roll your dexterity”. The player rolls a 10 sided die, trying to roll equal or less than their dexterity score. If they make it the card reads, “Pass: You connect with the creature, sending it reeling. It takes 3 damage” or conversely if they fail the roll it reads “You miss completely, stumbling and falling to the floor, you are stunned”. I love the combat system, I just wish there were more conbat cards with the game. I am sure they will have more with any upcoming expansions.

I recently tested using room descriptions for every room in the scenario, to try to add to the story like flavor of the game just as a GM would do. They enjoyed it a lot and said that it really enhanced the experience for them. I’m just passing that along to those of you interested in trying it. Again, the game is excellent as is. I am hoping for expansions soon, as I am looking forward to fresh scenarios.